


Come-down

by bluepointragdoll



Category: NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: Callen has special ways of showing affection, Episode Tag, Episode: s03 ep9 Betrayal, Established Relationship, Gen, Sometimes Sam is too soft-hearted for this job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:59:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluepointragdoll/pseuds/bluepointragdoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Can be read either as friendship or 'ship, thus the two tags] Episode tag for "Betrayal"; there's really no way to make this suck any less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come-down

The time spent on airplanes has always struck G as unreal and suspended, cut out from the normal world. Cars you can pull over, trains speed up and slow down and if you time it right you can get off them. But with boats and planes, once the journey starts you're stuck there until it ends, until your tiny little island of existence plugs back into the rest of the world at the port or on the tarmac. 

Usually that can't happen fast enough; there's a reason he sleeps through most flights and has made absolutely sure that Vance knows if someone ever sticks him somewhere as Agent Afloat for more than about a week, G will resign on the spot and go work for someone else. Airplanes and boats are traps, and there's not much you can do if something goes wrong. 

Okay, so that's not entirely true. But it _feels_ true, and so usually, G's ready to land more or less the minute the damn plane takes off. This time, with Jada Khaled fast asleep across one of the charter-jet's benches under a blanket and using Sam's jacket as a pillow, not so much. 

There's absolutely nothing he can do to make this easier on Sam. He's considered six or seven things since the moment the kid showed up and everything went to hell, up to and including leaving Jada behind or - if only really briefly - getting her shot. He'd be willing to take Sam hating him for a while as a result of either, if it'd make any real difference to how Sam took the whole thing, but G knows it won't and he's given up trying to find an out. 

This is the part of the job that Sam's not really good at. That he thinks he's better at than he is, right up until it burns him again. The lies are fine, the betrayal is fine, using people to further their ends is fine, it's all fine right up until it's someone helpless or innocent or vulnerable and then Sam's overreactive sense of responsibility kicks in and doesn't care that when it comes down to it, _that's the job_. 

G can let that go; Sam can't. Which probably says much better things about Sam than it does about G, to be honest, but that doesn't make what's going to happen when they land any better, or easier, or less likely to metaphorically rip Sam's guts out and trample them into the ground. 

When Sam comes back out of the tiny airplane bathroom, he sits down beside where Jada's sleeping and stares at the carpet for a while before he says anything. And when he does, it's in Spanish, so that even if Jada's half awake and hears, she won't understand. 

"She didn't come up with that rescue plan by herself," he says, looking up to meet G's eyes. 

For a minute G can't figure out why the hell he'd even be asking that question; it takes a minute for it to occur to him that it's a scrabble, maybe, for a little bit of comfort in a possible truth. In the idea that however much she thinks she loves Sam - who she thinks Sam is - it wasn't, isn't quite _that much_. That she had to be pushed and didn't think of throwing herself into the lions' den all on her own. 

It's not much, not even enough, but it's something and something G can give. He snorts and says, "Of course not," as if that much should be obvious, because frankly, she didn't. She'd've probably run around wringing her hands and being devastated later, after Sam was dead, without the metaphorical shove G gave her, making her moments of overwhelmed and indecisive panic work for him. Them. 

At least Sam's apparently not being enough of an idiot to think G would so much as blink at using her infatuation to save his life. Then G might actually have to smack him, and Sam doesn't need to take any more hits today. 

Sam's jaw tightens and he nods, staring off into the middle distance again before he rests his head in his hands and breathes _fuck._

G doesn't really have anything to add to that, so he gets up to find the cheap-ass coffee they keep on here instead. 

 

And the landing scene is as bad as expected, but at least it's not worse. Neither of them find anything to say; G makes sure Sam drives, tired or not, so that he'll have something to do instead of just staring out the window and thinking, but he comes up short on distracting banter or distracting anything. 

Before he gets out of the car he stops. Debates not saying anything, looking at his partner, but then figures _fuck it_. 

"You should talk to Michelle," he says. Sam frowns at him and G shrugs. "Tomorrow, maybe." 

"I can't even begin to list the reasons that's a stupid fucking idea," Sam says with an edge to his voice that G is entirely capable of ignoring. 

"Yeah?" he counters. "And I can think of one really important reason it isn't. And that's that neither of you deserves to deal with the fall-out of you spending the next three days hating yourself and her not knowing why." He stops short of actually saying _in fact, if you don't tell her I will_ , but Sam should be able to read his mind at least that well by now and besides, not saying it gives him plausible deniability. 

Sam probably does hear the threat, because for a minute he looks like he's swallowing a bunch of things he doesn't want to deal with having said; in the end, he manages to say, "Three days?" in something approximating tones of irritating amusement. 

G pauses, out of the car, before he closes the door and leans down to say, "You're still wallowing in self-hatred more than three days from now, I'm either dragging you and your kid to Disneyland, or we're sending Immy to her grandparents' and we're all going to Vegas. Fair warning." 

The smile he gets is a bit twisted, but all things considered, he'll take what he can get.


End file.
